by DAN GREEN
It is both known and accepted that Buddha taught his pupils in accordance to their ability to comprehend and that profoundly deeper teachings and dissertations were reserved and made available to those whom he decided were able to receive them. I should like to try to unveil one such hidden aspect of Buddha’s teaching as its explanation is now most timely. It is about food consumption and therefore it is poignantly ironic when we acknowledge the many statues that portray a fat Buddha figure, despite the usually held explanation for this being owed to identification with another figure entirely.
In January 2014 a UK Think Tank both warned of and reported the number of overweight and obese adults in the developing world has almost quadrupled to around one billion since 1980, rising in countries one would least think of such as Egypt and Mexico. One in three people worldwide are now overweight and governments are now under pressure to do more to influence diets. In the UK sixty-four per cent of adults are overweight or obese predicting a huge increase in heart attacks, strokes and diabetes and a four-fold increase in the number of children and teenagers admitted to hospital for obesity related conditions in the last decade in the UK.
Since then, statistics provided by the World Health Organisation updated in October for this year, confirms that world-wide obesity has tripled since 1975. In 2016 there were more than 1.9 billion adults (18 years old and over) overweight with 650 million of these clinically obese. 2016 saw 39% of adults overweight with 13% obese and 340 million children and adolescents (aged 5-19) in a similar state.
Pic 1; The fat Buddha
Tellingly, the name of the Future Buddha from the better known form of Maitreya, is Champa. And we find that to ‘champ’ is to make a snapping noise with the jaws in chewing! It also contains both homonyms ‘hamper’ meaning ‘to impede’ and also meaning ‘a large basket’ for carrying your picnic snacks.
To employ our Lost Mother Tongue insight into Buddhism I would like now to look at and explain a pictorial representation, ‘The Wheel of Life’, or Bhava Chakra, which can be found in Buddhist monasteries at the entrance to rooms reserved for puja, or prayer.
Before we venture forth, we must understand that interpretation of this great image already varies from School to School, and Buddha’s basic message has been innocently missed because of its ability to manifest upon two levels of consciousness, the standard prognosis tells us that the diagram depicts the way in which beings are locked into endless cycles. It will not matter if you aren’t already familiar with this mandala – nothing will be lost or disadvantageous – for I will purposely draw no reference or comparison to any other version or forecasts, on the basis that other Schools cannot agree anyway. The Bardo Thodol, or Tibetan Book of the Dead, unique amongst sacred books of the world, is a living, yoga technique.
Pic 2; The Wheel of Life
So, let us look at the ‘Wheel of Life’ bearing in mind that we are going to try and remove a covering from an outward appearance in disguise. At the very central top, above and outside of the wheel, are two cells disguised as eyes of a terrifying figure. Above them, and in their midst, one further cell. Shown here in their cell membrane which acts as a filter, we see how, as at the time of pregnancy, the very start of announced life, the single top cell, after fertilisation, divides initially into two new cells.
Pic 3; The single cell resembling an eye
Below both eyes/cells in the outer rim of the wheel, and above the first section, we see two figures carrying staffs. Attention here is drawn to our collective arrival of the idiom ‘The Staff of Life’, a mode of expression meaning a staple or necessary food as a sustaining or principal element.
The second figure we encounter, in clockwise direction, is that of a potter, whose clay is used to model, a model being a representation of an item not yet constructed, serving as the plan from which the finished work will be produced – in this instance, life form, the miracle of birth through the human body.
Our third illustration is of a primate monkey at a tree – is it not original theory of evolution that Man descended from the apes?
Fourth picture cipher appears to be people in some form of boat. I draw attention to the apparent waters upon which they float. It is the strands of the double helix, the linked nucleotides – they are sailing on the nucleo tides. The second symbol in this third section, is a building. Having just discussed DNA, we are still dealing with the basic building blocks of Life.
Pic 4; Double Helix DNA
Next, we see a couple engaging in intercourse, sexual union, the earliest possible stage of pregnancy. The following figure shows a person with an arrow to their eye suggesting blindness. At four weeks the future baby is an embryo, its eyelids arising after the fifth week to gradually close, bringing about an effective state of blindness until reopening during the seventh or eighth month.
Following along we see a figure apparently drinking. To involve drink is to introduce fluid, and here the inference is the amniotic fluid in the amniotic sac which holds approximately a litre of fluid recycled each hour.
The following illustration shows a figure at a tree, but this ‘tree’ is the fallopian tube where conception took place through a ripened ovum. The figure seems as if they are plucking ripened fruit from the tree.
Pic 5; Aspects of The Wheel of Life
Fallopian tube
We see next a pregnant woman, the birth process is graphically announced as underway, visible externally. Naturally, as is expected, we see a female giving birth. Our picture is complete – 360 degrees, returning us to our very first geometrical reminder of the cycle.
Now, let’s look briefly at the six sections inside the outer rim. The central figure in each of these sections is a Buddha-like being. These are indicating foetal (fetal) presentations or positions of the baby in the womb.
In the second section is a picture of a tree, and this is of the nature of a reference to a family tree, the ancestors and descendants collective of a family.
In the next scene there are people eating off the ground, the implication is of hunger, the state whereby an intake of food is required.
In our next pictograph, there are people boiling or burning in pots – the burning feeling of dyspepsia, disturbed digestion or the pains of indigestion, an upset stomach that can produce the symptom of heartburn, a painful burning sensation at the junction of the oesophagus and the stomach.
Directly after this scene we come away from food related subjects to see a collection of animals. This is concerned with the animal content of the human, how we all contain the capacity to display base animal characteristic, as stubborn as a mule, as sly as a fox, as timid as a mouse, as brave as a lion etc.
The final representation of the series shows human beings, the end product and goal of the reproduction of life.
Next, to make a little more sense of why we had two food related pictures, we go now to the centre of this Wheel of Life, birth and all, where we are shown what is usually attributed a cock/rooster/ hen, a pig and a snake, all three shown either eating each other or vomiting each other up.
This is a well disguised representation of the internals of the stomach, highlighting the liver (the cock), and the small intestine – the bowel, the begging ‘bowl’ of the Buddhist monk. The pig portrays the position and general outline of the descending colon, and the snake, that of the ileum. To consult the Christian bible for one moment, Genesis; 14, of the snake we hear; “Upon thy belly shalt thy go…”
Finally, we cast our attention to the smaller ring that envelopes the very centre of the wheel, two sections, one to the right describing people falling, and to the left the figures are rising up.
We are clearly being shown the correct positions of the descending colon and the ascending colon to the left – exactly where we would expect to find them in relationship to the central illustration of the stomach.
Pic 6; The Bowel – begging bowl of the Buddhist monk
This then, concludes the ‘Wheel of Life’, Buddha’s overlooked admonishment of sensible eating and food intake, which is paramount, a nutritious food for women whilst pregnant; a balanced diet containing plenty milk, fruit, cereals, greens and cheese – approximately in the region of 2,500 calories per day, a very significant figure for this is the usually held estimation in year of the birth of Buddha B.C.
There is another meaning to the word ‘enlightenment’, so often thought of as imply referring to Buddha’s instant endowment with spiritual understanding. ‘Enlighten’; ‘En = to cause to be in a specified state or condition, ‘Lighten’ = to make less heavy, as by a reduction in weight or load.
Buddhism, a Way (weigh) of Life, it seems, includes an instruction in proper eating, to eat sensible and healthy and keep the body at its correct measure. We have taken a necessary new view of the Wheel of Life. The centre portion of a wheel is a hub – find the letters in the word ‘Buddha’. A wheel spins. A wheel orbits a central point, turns on an axis. It rotates. It revolves, it makes a revolution. From ‘revolve’ we find the word ‘evolve’, to develop by evolutionary processes. A revolution is the wheel spinning once. From ‘revolution’ we find ‘evolution’, a gradual process in which something unrolls, discloses, the doctrine from which higher life forms arise from the lower, including teachings.
Copyright 2017 by Dan Green
Dan Green
Dan Green is a British author, writer, broadcaster and researcher specialising in Synchronicity and the Collective Unconscious and refers to himself as ‘A Human Search Engine’.
Inducted into the arcane via the Tibetan systems of Kalachakra and Vajrayana, he directed his 2010 Movie Documentary ‘The Murder of Mary Magdalene – Genocide of the Holy Bloodline’ based on his books that synthesise the mystery of Rennes-le-Chateau and his discovery of ‘The Lincoln Cathedral Code’.
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PS The Purpose of the Parables
(Mark 4:10-12; Luke 8:9-10)
Then the disciples came and asked Jesus: “Why do you speak to people in parables?”
He answered them,
“You have been given knowledge about the secrets of the kingdom from heaven, but it hasn’t been given to them, because to anyone who has something, more will be given, and he will have more than enough. But from the one who doesn’t have anything, even what he has will be taken away from him. That’s why I speak to them in parables, because they look but don’t see, and they listen but don’t hear or understand.’
“With them the prophecy of Isaiah is being fulfilled, which says:
‘You will listen and listen but never understand.
You will look and look but never comprehend, for this people’s heart has become dull,and their ears are hard of hearing.
They have shut their eyes so that they might not see with their eyes, and hear with their ears, and understand with their heart and turn, and I would heal them.’
“How blessed are your eyes because they see, and your ears because they hear!
I tell all of you with certainty, many prophets and righteous people longed to see the things you see but did not see them, and to hear the things you hear but did not hear them.”